


A fraying quilt of stars

by narada-talis (sarensen)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Keith (Voltron) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, M/M, Non-Explicit Foreplay, Post S7, Sheith work through their mutual ptsd with open and honest communication, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Unconditional Love and Support, corny and unnecessary paladin documentaries, s8 doesn’t exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:26:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26426356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/narada-talis
Summary: Shiro's Champion fights were recorded. The team accidentally see one of the clips, evoking a reaction in Keith that makes him realize that his PTSD is maybe not as under control as he thought it was. Together, sheith take the first slow steps on the way to healing.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 187
Collections: Sheith Prompt Party 2020





	A fraying quilt of stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: Shiro's arena fights were recorded. All of them. Shiro and/or Keith watches some of it.

It comes with the territory. 

The "territory" being: literally saving the universe from a threat magnitudes above anything it had ever faced. Above what any of them had been prepared or even willing to sacrifice in the saving of. 

It comes with the territory of being heroes—or of being called heroes, even when none of them think it of themselves, or feel like they deserve the title. 

All they feel is tired. 

Exhausted with the endless grinding purpose, the unstoppable drive with which they'd been hurtled through the stars and into the now.

 _Heroes_. The Paladins of Voltron. Defenders of the Universe.

Six tired soldiers, huddled together with the camaraderie of having survived, of having _lived_ despite the impossible odds, of having given more of themselves to the cause than they had to give.

It's only natural that people want to know.

It comes with the territory...

"Shut up, everyone! It's starting!" says Lance excitedly, shushing the other Paladins with an animated gesture as he unmutes the large TV screen mounted on the wall.

They sit in various states of casual undress, crammed into the long couch in the Atlas' crew space. They're all there: Lance, his Blue Lion slippers toed off so he can sit cross-legged on the couch, Allura, sitting no less properly despite her Princeessly bearing, one knee drawn up so her chin can rest on it. Pidge, sprawled upside down with her head dangling over the edge and the light of the TV reflecting in her glasses. Hunk, battling to balance a giant plate of hors d'oeuvres that are way too fancy for the occasion.

And Keith and Shiro, at peace with the general organized chaos that is the other Paladins, wrapped up in each other's arms lazily. Content.

Because they do this, now. They cuddle.

They've _been_ doing it, and it's never felt awkward, or strange; they never had to shuffle around, bumping arms and shoulders until they finally settled in against each other. From the start, from the very first time, it had only ever felt right. Like it was meant to be, like they were always meant to fit against each other in this way.

This is, Keith thinks, what peace must feel like.

The room quiets down as the documentary starts.

It's only natural, Coran had told them after the producers had first pitched the idea to him, that people would want to know more about the Paladins who saved the universe. 

"It comes with the territory," he'd said, waving a placating hand in the general direction of Keith's crossed arms and stubbornly unwilling expression. "You're famous, now. You're going to be getting a lot of this."

What "a lot of this" had meant, they would later learn, was a series of documentaries about each Paladin, a personal biography about their life, their past, their _story_. A way for the general public to learn more about them, to get to know what kind of person it took to risk it all, give up so much for a cause that seemed hopeless until right at the very end. 

A blatant invasion of their privacy, if you asked Keith. Which no one did.

And so they'd all been subjected to being interviewed for hours, under harsh lights and surrounded by too many cameras, with various levels of compliance. 

Lance had eaten it up, because of course he had. He'd played right into it, overdramatic and extreme in his gesticulation as he always was. 

Keith had said maybe ten words to the interviewer, and all of them reluctantly. As far as he was concerned, everything about this was a bad idea, and if they wanted to do a stupid documentary about his life, they would have to go and look elsewhere for their source material.

Anyway, he wasn't the one with the story to tell. 

That was Shiro.

Keith turns his head to look at him as the documentary starts. Shiro catches him looking, and smiles a little secret smile at him. 

He'd told Keith didn't mind the process of being documentized—but that's just how Shiro is. Generally amicable, liked by everyone. Of course he wouldn't have a problem with just sitting and talking to someone for half an hour.

His biopic is the first to air. 

Keith supposes the network wants to start off the series with a bang, have the most interesting interview first to grab people's attention, hook them in, keep them watching for next few weeks. They'd probably put Allura's right at the end, he thinks. She's the next most popular Paladin—even if Shiro isn't technically a Paladin anymore, he still wins all the polls. 

Keith always votes for him, of course.

His own interview will probably air somewhere in the middle—the low point of the series, when the network has already hooked its viewers and isn't worried about ratings anymore. That's just fine with him. The mortifying ordeal of being loved by the other Paladins—by his friends, by _Shiro_ —is enough. He does not need to be _known_ on top of that, least of all by members of the general public he tries his best to stay away from most of the time. Thank you very much.

The intro music is some kind of tacky, military-esque brass band affair, with lots of snare drums and heroic trumpeting. Portrait photos of their faces fade in and out over a background of the Coalition flag. Voltron is there. 

It's... a lot.

Lance and Pidge poke fun at it, howling with laughter at the way-too-serious expressions in their photos. Shiro only smiles, and says he thinks the whole thing is very nice, because of course Shiro is a saint who doesn't have a single bad thing to say about anything (or, at least, anything that isn't Slav). 

The intro ends, and the interview starts, the camera focused on Shiro in all his resplendent, fully-uniformed glory, straight-backed and perfect in every way—the polar opposite of the man who slouches on the sofa next to Keith now in frayed sweatpants and mismatched socks, watching himself talk with a slightly self-deprecating smile.

Keith doesn't think it's possible to love anyone more than he loves Shiro.

It's all going very well—the producers have inserted video clips of Shiro's time as a Paladin over the interview here and there; apparently, some of their more crucial engagements with the Galran army had been caught on camera. Key points in the war that would end up being a turning point toward their victory. Shiro speaks eloquently and humbly like he always does, and ends up being phenomenally inspiring anyway, because that's just the way he is.

He talks about the formation of Voltron, about flying his Lion for the first time. The abruptness with which the Galra, the War, Voltron, all of it had crashed into his life. Into all of their lives. The adrenaline of the dogfights in space, set against the backdrop of unfathomably old nebulae and planets they could never even have imagined exist. 

He doesn't speak about the cruelty they had seen or the brutality with which the Galra killed, mercilessly efficient. He doesn't speak about the repression of countless millions, the bleak and hopeless life of slavery they had been subjected to. 

How many had died never knowing how close they had come to being freed.

He keeps it light, keeps the interviewer at a distance, all while making it seem like he's being forthright with the information he does give away.

And it's all going very well.

Until they cut away from the interview with him, and start a segment about his past.

"You all know and love the Captain of the Atlas, Shiro the Hero, the ex-Black Paladin," says the voice-over, "But he wasn't always the gentle and friendly man you see on the screen before you. You may not know this, but Shiro has a dark past with the Galra, a secret history buried underneath the heroics, and it may explain why he had such high stakes in the outcome of the war."

Next to him, Keith feels Shiro go tense.

The screen goes dark for a second, and when it lights up again, it shows a huge, enclosed dome, ringed with tiers upon which thousands of Galra sit, an indistinguishable writhing swarm of purple and red.

Massive spotlights cast giant circles of white on the open space in the center of the dome below. The arena. The Galra Arena.

And in the center of it all stands Shiro.

No, not Shiro. The Champion.

His hair is all black, matted to his face and neck with sweat and grime and blood. The tattered remnants of a purple Galra prison shirt barely cling to his shoulders, and the bodysuit underneath is ripped, displaying long, cruel gashes down his sides, brown with dried blood.

He's thinner than he is now, almost gaunt, but lithe with muscle borne of endless fighting, endless survival. 

And his eyes... His eyes are different. 

Lost is the gentle gray, the raincloud kindness with which he looks at Keith now, at the others, at his friends. Gone are the minute laugh lines crinkling at the corners, the gentle halfmoon slants when he smiles.

These eyes speak only of murder. Of bloodlust. They're cold, foreign and alienating, so very different to the Shiro they know. 

And they're hungry.

The Shiro on the screen—the Champion, Keith thinks, because he can't think of this man with his ugly, snarling, rage-filled scream or the terrifying speed with which he charges at his opponent as _his Shiro_ —is merciless. He attacks with a ruthlessness borne from desperation, and it's cruel, and it isn't quick, and it ends in blood.

His opponent—a Galra many times larger than him—is on the ground in a matter of moments, and the Champion crouches over him, glowing prosthetic buried deep inside the chest cavity it had created.

And he doesn't smile at his victory, doesn't show any signs at all that he's even fully aware the fight is _over_.

He just looks hungry. Like he wants more. Like some part of him craves that violence. 

Keith swallows heavily.

He's seen that expression once before.

 _Turn if off_ , he wants to say, but finds that he can't breathe. Hasn't been breathing for long seconds, since the clip started. The interviewer is saying something about the inhumanity of forcing slaves to fight for entertainment, about the courage and the strength it took to live through something as horrible as that, and how much more courage it must have taken to work through that trauma—but Keith can hardly hear him. He feels frozen to the spot, staring into the cold and unfamiliar eyes on the screen and breaking inside with the knowledge of whom they belong to. 

He can't move, because those eyes had been turned on him once before.

The TV flashes and goes dark.

And it's like a spell is broken. Keith hauls in a deep lungful of air, and exhales shakily. He blinks a few times, coming back to himself and slowly looking around.

Pidge is standing in front of the couch, the remote still pointed at the TV. She lowers her hand and turns toward Shiro, something in her expression shattered.

"That's not who Shiro is," she says to the ground, softly, but emphatically. And then, looking up to meet Shiro's eyes, "That's not who you are anymore."

Keith is too afraid to look at Shiro, too afraid of looking at him and recognizing that same, strange light in his eyes. He knows it's irrational. He knows Pidge is right. _That_ isn't who Shiro is, not anymore, not for a long time. Maybe not ever. The Champion had been a survival mechanism. Becoming him was what had brought Shiro back to Keith alive.

But Keith's seen those eyes, the Champion's eyes, once before, and it hadn't been on camera.

Shiro extracts himself from Keith's arms and stands up. The others call out to him, their voices laced with equal parts sympathy and horror at what they'd seen, but Shiro doesn't stop. He walks out, leaves them there, and doesn't say a word, and doesn't look back. 

Keith watches his retreating back as he leaves the room, and lifts his hand absently to touch his cheek.

Beneath his fingers, the scar aches dully.

***

Later, he finds Shiro outside the Garrison compound, sitting on an outcropping of rock that faces the empty desert, the cold stars, the distant horizon. His old hoverbike drifts nearby, its antigrav stabilizers keeping it a few inches off the ground. 

The orange light from the recently-restored particle barrier makes Keith's shadow a long, strange thing, angular and ever-shifting as he climbs the outcropping, hefts himself over the edge, and stands looking out over the desert, catching his breath.

He'd grabbed a packet of Shiro's favorite potato chips from the cafeteria on the way over—Calbee brand, in a flavor called "Consommé Punch", which is the most Japanese thing Keith has ever seen. This, he tosses at Shiro's face in lieu of greeting, hiding his smile as Shiro's hand shoots up to snatch it, lightning-quick.

Shiro gives him a questioning look as he sits down next to him, letting his legs dangle over the edge.

"You didn't pitch at dinner," Keith explains. "Thought you'd be hungry."

He doesn't mention that he hadn't eaten either, hadn't been able to do much more than push the food around in his plate and wonder where Shiro was.

"Thanks," says Shiro, tearing open the packet. The careful, deliberate way with which he pinches chip by single chip between his giant Altean fingers fills Keith with warmth, a wave of fondness that feels dangerously close to relief.

 _This_ is the Shiro he knows, the gentle soul whose body is always just slightly larger than he totally knows what to do with, who moves with such care and shows only tenderness in his touch.

This is _his_ Shiro.

Keith scoots a little closer to him so he can lean his head on Shiro's shoulder, content to listen to him crunching chips in the silence for a while. The breeze is always cool out here, especially at night. It stirs the dry grasses and desert flowers, whipping up apparitions in the dust, silent witnesses to the pair sitting huddled together on the cold rock, the only sentient life for miles.

When the packet is empty and scrunched into a little ball, when the last crumbs have been carefully wiped from Shiro's hands onto his sweatpants, Keith finally lifts his head to look at him.

"You okay?"

Shiro doesn't meet his eyes. He stares down at his lap, absently picking at the drawstring of his sweatpants. Somewhere, a lone whip-poor-will trills in the night, its song echoing into the emptiness. Shiro is quiet for a long time, so long that Keith isn't sure he's going to reply at all.

Then he says, "I just wasn't expecting... I didn't want people to see me like that. You know?"

Keith hates the way his voice shakes, how small it sounds. How broken. 

He doesn't know what to say—if there's even anything he _can_ say. Should say. He wouldn't know the right words, anyway. He never seems to, not when it matters. Admittedly, he's gotten better at it lately—being loved will do that to a person, peel them open so that all their emotions spill out for the people close to them to see, whether they like it or not. 

So sometimes, he finds the words, like the time in the kitchen with Hunk, when he'd said all those embarrassing things, when he'd told him for some godforsaken reason that he's the Paladin he's most impressed by, as if that's something Keith can just say without immediately wanting to die.

But it turns out it had been the right thing to say.

Now, with Shiro, out here in the cold desert, alone in the dark, the words won't come so easily.

What he can do is take Shiro's hand in his, the Altean one, with its massive metal fingers that dwarf his own and the constant, warm thrum of energy that buzzes slightly against his skin.

What he can do is bring the hand up to his lips, and kiss the knuckles.

What he can do is show him how much he loves him, in all the little ways and in all the ways that count most. Even if he can't say it, even if he may never be able to say it at all. He can hold his hand and sit with him, out here in the cold desert, and be quiet with him.

In a little while, they get up, silently get onto their hoverbikes, and go home.

***

And then, Keith flinches.

They're lying together in Shiro's narrow bed, half undressed, half hard. Shiro is kissing his neck, trailing hot and wet lips beneath his ear, and over his throat. Keith tilts his head back, making soft, content mewls that would make him die of embarrassment if he realizes he's been doing it. One hand paws at the hard lines of Shiro's human arm, clawing his fingers into the muscle and dragging them over the soft skin. The other is buried in his hair, cradling his head gently. 

It's dark in the room, the only source of light emanating from Shiro's shoulder port. It bathes them in a soft, blue glow, blurring the shadows and giving everything an ethereal tint, as though they were in the astral plane, surrounded by those strange and beautiful stars.

Shiro shifts so that one thigh presses up between Keith's legs, putting the slightest pressure on the hardness there. Helplessly, Keith's hips twitch forward against it, seeking more. 

"Shiro," he gasps, more just to hear the sound of his name than because he wants to say anything. He's starting to get beyond the point where he can think clearly, anyway. Pleasure spools at the bottom of his spine, in that lazy way when they both know they have time, when it's late enough and still early enough, when they have all the quiet hours of the night to spend seeking their pleasure.

Shiro moves his thigh, and replaces it with his Altean hand. His large palm finds the outline of Keith's cock through his boxer shorts, and he rubs it up and down. Keith's whole body shudders, and he hisses, throwing his head to the side, pressing his face into the pillow.

He can feel Shiro smiling against his neck. He nips lightly at Keith's collarbone, hooking one big, metal finger in the waistband of Keith's boxers and tugging lightly. "Off."

Keith scrambles to lift his hips, shimmying out of the boxers. Shiro takes his off too, and now they're both gloriously naked, slightly glossy-eyed and achingly hard with want.

Shiro puts a hand on Keith's chest, pushing him backward and climbing on top of him to straddle his thighs. Both his wrists fit easily in Shiro' prosthetic hand, pinned to the pillows over his head.

And then Shiro leans over him.

And suddenly, Keith is back at the clone facility.

It slams into him with all the force of colliding suns, pulling him under in the space of a breath. 

The purple glare of the clone pods surrounds him, so bright his eyes sting with it. The glare of Shiro's Galra arm is brighter, hovering inches away from his face.

Suddenly, he can't breathe. Suddenly, his entire chest is seized in the grip of blinding panic, the adrenaline of survival instinct surging so strongly through him it turns his stomach. Burns the back of his throat. 

He isn't strong enough to fight him—not Shiro, not like this. 

A tiny voice inside his mind is yelling that it isn't Shiro, over and over, _not Shiro_ , screaming it at himself, loudly silent. 

And yet his instinct, his body won't listen. Knows that he was going to die. 

Electric fire burns into the side of his face, and it hurts like nothing Keith has ever felt before.

And he flinches.

Above him, Shiro freezes.

Keith's squeezed his eyes shut, head turned away, but he can feel the way Shiro's body stills, feel it grow tense as he realizes.

They're no longer in the clone facility. 

Keith's mind jerks back to the present, crashing into reality inelegantly and brutally. They're lying in Shiro's narrow bed, naked and hard with want, and the clone facility now seems like no more than a far-away dream that flashed by in less than a second.

It was long enough.

Keith's heart is pounding. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he tries to control his sudden and terrible panic, and he knows his face is doing something bad—a grimace, a helpless outward expression of the fear that seizes him—but he can't help it. Can't school his expression into something neutral, can't make himself reflect that intrinsic knowledge, the obviousness of where they are, of the fact that he isn't in danger.

Shiro lets go of him immediately, climbing off of him and sitting up on the edge of the bed.

Keith clenches his fists and lowers his arms, and takes a few deep, calming breaths.

He hasn't even thought about the fight in the clone facility in such a long time. So much has happened in between, so much death and trauma and desperation, so many lives in such terrible danger that what happened between him and Shiro seems dwarfed in comparison.

They'd both come out of that particular fight alive. Keith had gotten Shiro back, _his_ Shiro, the real Shiro. It wasn't him that had attacked him. 

It was the clone. Not Shiro. 

Keith _knows_ this. 

He knows his Shiro would never do something like that to him, knows it so intrinsically that to his mind, the fight with the clone has become nothing more than another scuffle in the endless war, another challenge to overcome, another day to survive. He's never forgiven Shiro, because there has been nothing to forgive. Shiro didn't do anything.

It was the clone.

And yet.

His eyes had been Shiro's eyes. The Champion's eyes. The same eyes that kneeled on top of a Galra many times his own size, staring down at where his hand was buried in the cavity of its chest, and had looked _hungry_.

Keith buries his hands in his face. He lies there for a while, quietly, and fights harder than he ever has in his life not to cry.

He doesn't understand it. He doesn't know why he's crying, when he is safe in Shiro's room on the Atlas, when the danger is a year and a galaxy away.

Shiro doesn't move. Maybe he's afraid to, afraid of how Keith would react. Keith hears him shift slightly on the sheets, maybe reaching toward him. 

He doesn't touch him.

A few minutes pass before the adrenaline slowly starts to subside, leaving behind a deep ache in every muscle in Keith's body. Once he feels like he can breathe again, feels like he can move again, he murmurs, "God, I'm sorry."

His voice sounds wet still, muffled behind his hands. "Shiro, I'm _so_ sorry."

"Don't," says Shiro softly. "Keith... don't."

Keith sits up, finally lowering his hands so he can look at Shiro. The Atlas has brightened the lights in the room a little, so that they can see each other clearly. It makes Keith feel a little better; a little less afraid.

Shiro's face is a war field. He looks devastated.

"Should I... Do you want me to leave?" he asks, his voice subdued. He doesn't meet Keith's eyes.

Keith takes a deep breath through his nose, and exhales it in a sigh. He reaches out toward Shiro, wanting to touch him, to reassure him. His hand shakes.

He puts it down in his lap.

Shiro nods to himself, like he's decided something important. He gets up and starts to pull his pants back on, clearly intent on leaving.

"No," Keith says automatically. "Wait. Please."

Shiro pauses for a moment, then finishes pulling up his pants. Then he sits down again, very slowly, every movement deliberate and careful. Like he's trying not to startle him.

Keith hates it. Vehemently.

He tugs the blanket up over his waist to hide his own nudity, and they both sit there for a while, the hum of the air conditioning the only sound between them.

Keith swallows, the muscles in his jaw working. Beneath the blankets, his hands curl into fists. He doesn't understand his body's reactions, the echoes of fear he still feels. He should be over this.

He _is_ over it. It doesn't matter. It never has. It was just another fight.

So why did he flinch?

He hears Shiro take a deep, steeling breath before he asks, "Are you okay?"

Keith nods automatically. He's fine. He's always fine.

Except that his hands are still shaking, even when he clenches them hard enough that his nails leave white indents on his palms.

"It wasn't you," he says decisively. He means the clone facility. He means the scar on his cheek. He'd made up his mind to sound resolute, but his voice trembles slightly. And as if that tremble breaks the filter between his mind and his mouth, the next thing he says is, "Right?"

He immediately squeezes his eyes shut again. Why would he say that when he _knows_ it hadn't been Shiro? When he _knows_ it had been the clone who had burned his face, who had pinned him to the ground, who with every ounce of strength it possessed had tried to end his life.

Shiro is quiet for a long, shocked moment. Then he says, "Keith. Keith, look at me."

Keith slowly opens his eyes.

Shiro shifts so that he's sitting on his knees on top of the bed, facing Keith fully. "I wish I could say that," he whispers. "I wish I could tell you I would never hurt you. That a part of me dies every time I look at your face and see that scar. I wish I could tell you how many nights I've lain awake resenting myself with every single fiber of my being for what I did to you."

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and when he closes his eyes, tears leak down over his cheeks. "Keith, you are the most precious thing in this entire universe to me. Even if it meant losing the war, even if it meant losing Earth to the Galra... if it meant I could save you instead, if it meant I— if it meant I could take back what I did to you at the clone facility? I would do it in a heartbeat. Give it all up for you. But I can't. I can never take it back."

Keith wants to reach out for him. Wants to take him into his arms and hug him close. Wants to stroke his hair and whisper softly that it's going to be okay, that it doesn't matter, that it's all in the past now.

His treacherous body won't move. 

Instead, he just sits there, staring down at the blankets pooled in his lap. A thread is fraying from underneath the satin ribbon border. It shivers lightly in the draft coming from the vent above the bed. 

Eventually, Shiro sighs and says, "Keith, it kills me to see you hurting like this. It kills me to know that... that I'm the cause of it. How can I help you when I'm the very reason you need help in the first place? We should've talked about this sooner. I was a fool to think everything was okay."

"I want everything to be okay," Keith says, looking up at Shiro now, willing himself desperately to move, to go to him, to hug him. Just to be close to him. 

His body refuses to obey his commands.

He swallows past the lump in his throat, bunching the blanket between his hands. "Shiro, I love you _so much_. You know that, right? More than anything." He fights to force out the words; feels every single one of them stick to the roof of his mouth. They hurt as he forces them past the lump in his throat, past the barrier of his traitorous lips that want nothing more than to remain shut.

It isn't what he'd meant to say; or rather, it isn't all he'd meant to say. But it's all he can manage right now.

Shiro nods. "Keith, I know. Of course I know. But it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive to the fact that you're terrified of me."

Keith's first instinct is to argue. He wants to say, _I'm not scared of you. I could never be scared of you._

But maybe he is.

He looks at Shiro, torn. And hating himself for feeling torn. 

Something of his warring emotions must show on his face. Shiro shifts forward, carefully, slowly, and reaches his human hand out toward Keith. He keeps it still, hovering an inch away from Keith's shoulder, uncertain in a way he rarely ever shows to people. "Can I...?"

Keith watches the hand apprehensively.

But it isn't a Galra cruiser, or the gaunt and wraith-like Druids with their menacing yellow eyes, or the terrifying void of empty space and the myriad deaths it held for fragile mortal beings such as them.

It's just Shiro.

 _His_ Shiro.

Keith growls, forcefully pushing aside his stupid, stupid fear, and flinging himself into Shiro's arms. He clings to him, digging his fingers into his back, and now he's naked in his lap with the blanket slipped down around his calves, but he doesn't care.

All that matters is that it's Shiro pulling him close. That it's Shiro's warm smell surrounding him, his strong arm coming to lie so gently across his shoulders.

Shiro slumps slightly into him, maybe in relief, Keith thinks. 

"I'm sorry," Keith says, the words muffled in Shiro's neck. "I'm so sorry."

"Keith, you never have to apologize to me," says Shiro wetly, "Not for this. Not for anything. If anything, I should be apologizing to you."

Keith shakes his head as much as he can, still buried in the crook of Shiro's shoulder as it is. 

The hum of the Atlas surrounds them, an almost sympathetic sound. Keith's arm pebble slightly in the cold of the room.

Beneath his palms, Shiro's back is almost shockingly warm in contrast. 

He focuses on the rise and fall of Shiro's chest, all the points where their bodies are connected, where he can feel his heart beating just as hard and as fast as his own.

Maybe he's just as scared as Keith is. Just as human.

"What if..." Keith's voice comes out softer than he intends. His throat clicks as he swallows, and tries again: "Is it always going to be like this?"

He tightens his arms around Shiro convulsively, helpless to stop the reactions of his own body. He doesn't know if he's trying to stop Shiro from leaving, or himself. He isn't sure about anything anymore. 

Everything had been so clear—black and white and red and blue and yellow and green, all the colors of his world bright and distinct and lined with the hard edges of Voltron.

Now, those colors have begun to bleed. He isn't sure anymore where one ends and the next begins. Where the Black Paladin of Voltron—the victorious, the strong—ends and _Keith_ begins. Keith, who is only twenty-one years old, but is starting to realize he's lived a lot more life than entirely fits into those years.

"I don't know," says Shiro honestly.

"I hate it," says Keith. "I hate feeling like this. It's just. It's so unfair. We've been through so much. We had to sacrifice everything. We never even got to live our lives, you know? Everything's changed, and it can never go back to the way it used to be." 

He doesn't mean that they can't go back to school—that the school had been destroyed along with most of the other buildings on Earth. He doesn't even mean that they will always be the Paladins of Voltron; that this path had been preordained for them, chosen for them, that their lives had been molded into the shapes of warriors when their bodies were still that of children. 

"We gave up everything we were for this war. Lost everything. And now... now we can't even have this. You and me. After everything, we can't even be together because I'm too _scared_?"

He beats his fist on the bed, shaking the mattress slightly. And again. And again. It's a poor outlet for the magnitude of the rage that boils inside him. Anger at—at everything, at the unfairness of it all. Mostly at himself.

He says: "You deserve better than me, Shiro. You deserve the world. I'm sorry I'm... like this. Sorry I can't be that for you."

"No, Keith," Shiro grinds out, pushing Keith back by the shoulders so he can look at him. "No. Blame me for this, blame Zarkon. Blame Haggar for making the clones. But never, ever blame yourself for feeling the way you do."

They stare at each other for a long moment. Keith is the first to look away.

"Let's just take it slow," Shiro suggests. "One step at a time. We'll only go as far as you're comfortable with, and as soon as you feel uneasy, we'll stop. Okay?"

Keith picks at the fraying edge of the blanket, watching the long thread unravel underneath his fingers.

"I just wanted us to be together," he says weakly. "I never wanted... this."

"I know," says Shiro, "but it's what we have. We'll make it work."

Keith looks up at him. "Really?"

"I know we will," says Shiro, and despite the red still rimming his eyes, he sounds so confident, so sure that they're going to be okay.

"Let's not watch any more of those dumb documentaries, okay?" says Keith, blinking back tears.

It makes Shiro laugh, makes his eyes crescent into half moons and crinkle in the corners. It makes something in Keith's chest feel lighter. Spontaneously, he throws his arms around him, pulling him into a tight hug, relieved that he can still do this much, at least.

And this is something no amount of documentaries could ever truly show: how vulnerable the War has made them, how open to hurt, how helpless to stop it.

Maybe some part of Keith will always be back at the clone facility, losing a part of himself over and over again to the murderous rage of a monster wearing Shiro's face.

But some part of him will always be here, too—safe in Shiro's arms, safe in the knowledge that this is _now_ and not _then_ , that Shiro will love him no matter what, and more than anything, that it's safe for him to love Shiro, too.


End file.
